A passion for food has inspired you to open up your own restaurant. You can picture the patrons sitting at their tables, looking at the menus and debating about what delicious items they should pick. Before you get ahead of yourself, you need two things to open up a restaurant.
1. Funding
Restaurants need a lot of funding to open. You will need renovations and interior decorating. You will need expensive equipment for cooks and kitchen workers. You will need to acquire licenses and permits. These are all things that you have to pay for before you can open your doors to the public. And you still need funds to take care of daily expenses and unexpected emergencies.
Underestimating funding needs is one of the top reasons for restaurant failure — this can happen within the first year of opening the business. Unfortunately, a lot of owners can’t access enough funds to get their business safely past its first year. Big banks are notoriously strict when it comes to small business funding. Your chance of having your application rejected is higher when you have one of the following qualities:
- Bad personal credit
- Bad business credit
- No collateral
- Short business history
Banks are also likely to reject applications for members of high-risk industries. As you can guess, the restaurant industry is considered high-risk.
Aspiring owners don’t have to choose between a precarious financial position or no restaurant at all. There are alternative funding resources that don’t have the bank’s strict requirements. Your personal credit and lack of assets don’t have to hold you back. You can visit First Down Funding to learn more about this funding alternative and fill out an application for your business.
2. Location
A restaurant’s location can determine whether customers line up half-way down the block to get in. A bad restaurant location is difficult for customers to reach — this means you could be nowhere near a subway station, a bus stop or a parking lot. If it feels like it will be a trial just to get to a restaurant, customers will skip it in favor of something more convenient.
A bad location could also mean that the area will make potential customers wary. They will worry about violent crime statistics, boarded-up buildings and other red flags.
You could even take a look at the bigger picture. The town or city that you’re living in can affect the fate of your brand-new business. Check out the best cities to open a restaurant to see if you’re more likely to be successful or if you’re going to struggle in a tough market. It’ll be easier to learn now than find out later.
It seems strange to think that the ingredients and the menu aren’t the top two things that can affect the destiny of your restaurant. You could have the best dishes in the entire city, but if customers can’t find your place or you don’t have enough money to keep your doors open, impressive dishes can’t save you.
About Carson Derrow
